


poison oak, some boyhood bravery

by johniaurens



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Melancholy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9393620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/johniaurens
Summary: John doesn’t come back the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexanger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/gifts).



> **alexangery said:**  
>  do [things you always meant to say but never got the chance] lams OuO
> 
> i modified it a little but, 
> 
> they are doing so well and i love them. title's from poison oak by bright eyes, a lams song,

**i.** _It’s okay._  
John doesn’t come back the same. 

He’s more skittish, jumpy, and there’s just something about him that’s changed. Something Alex feels connected to by his very soul. 

“A shell,” John says, that empty quality to his voice again, “I’m sucked dry. A fucking shell.”

“You’re not,” Alex says quietly. “You’re still bouncing back.” 

John laughs. It’s not a pretty sound and Alex wants to flinch but he doesn’t. 

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he mumbles into his hand. _Hand_. Alex is still getting used to the singular there and he knows John is too. 

“You wanted to change things,” Alex reminds him, gently. 

“I should have known. I can’t change anything. _Enlisting?_ What’s wrong with me? I could’ve died.”

Alex bites his lip so he doesn’t remind John about the fact that a few months ago he’d been perfectly content to die. He’d left a note, he’d called him after he’d already left and he’d said “I’ll come back, I think. It might be in a casket but I’ll come back.” Alex had screamed for hours. No crying, no tears, just anger and despair that felt like white noise behind his eyes. No heartbreak; rather his heart turned into mush and gore in his chest. He thought he could hear it make a slippery-squishy noise every time he moved. Nothing to break. A knife through that mess of tissue and muscle and flattened, severed veins would have just made it fall apart. 

“I’m sorry,” John says. It’s heavy. He sounds sorry. He sounds tired. He sounds a little desperate.

Alex takes his hand. He doesn’t say any of the things he wants to say. They’re still raw. They’re still not completely true.

**ii.** _Don’t apologize for things you can’t control._  
“Hey, baby,” Alex says. John’s sitting on the couch, watching TV. No, not watching - looking at it. Looking through it. Looking a little to the left of it. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even really react to Alex, just keeps looking. Alex sits next to him. John flinches a little and Alex shuffles a little farther away, puts a little distance between them. 

“You okay?” he asks carefully a few minutes later. The laugh track is still playing in reaction to a character saying something that no doubt was meant to be funny. John isn’t laughing and neither is Alex, but then again, neither of them is really watching. 

John is quiet for a long while. Then he takes a deep, shuddering breath, and seemingly breaks free from whatever trance he was in, turns his head slowly to look at Alex. Neither of them attempt to make eye contact, Alex’s gaze a few inches to John’s left, John’s eyes focused on the collar of Alex’s shirt. 

“Okay?” asks Alex, softly. John takes in a breath through his nose, a dry sniffle, and then he wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and goes “yeah. Sorry.”

Alex’s heart breaks. It doesn’t get any easier, the self doubt, the resentment in John’s tone. The genuine apologies he always offers him whenever he spaces out like this. 

“Sweetheart,” he starts, affirmations and affection already dancing on his tongue, but John holds up his hand palm first, flat, signals him to stop, and Alex shuts his mouth. 

“Please just.” 

John’s jaw works for a few seconds like he’s trying to work out what he wants to say, trying to figure out how to mold those thoughts into the shape of a sentence. 

“Please just let me apologize and be upset for a few minutes.”

Alex watches him quietly. Watches the angle of his nose and the sharpness of his jaw, the curl of his hair against his cheeks, his forehead. He looks tense. He looks younger than he is. Alex swallows around his words for a few seconds.

“Okay,” Alex says finally, “okay.”

John relaxes. “Thank you,” he says.  
“Yeah,” says Alex. “Any time.”

**iii.** _Marry me._  
On the park bench near the lake John crosses his legs and flexes his biceps rhythmically. Alex can tell, because he can feel them move through both their jackets. 

It’s a little cold. Alex’s wrists are stiff and his fingers won’t work properly. He keeps having to squeeze his hands into fists to force the blood to flow into them. John doesn’t look at him or at his hands. His eyes are locked in the distance, somewhere in the general vicinity of the flock of ducks in the water. 

Alex looks at him as he watches the horizon. He isn’t sure what to make of it.

“It’s cold,” Alex says. John flexes his biceps and then he swallows. 

“Yeah,” John says, slow. 

“You zoning out?” asks Alex, because John sounds like he hadn’t even realized that it was cold before Alex mentioned it. 

John shrugs. “A little. Just. My eyes won’t focus.”

Alex nods. “You wanna talk about it? Is it bad?”

John leans into Alex a little firmer. He stops flexing his biceps and deflates a little. “I don’t know. It’s just there. It isn’t that bad. You make it better.”

There’s things that makes Alex want to say - forbidden things, too forward, things he’s scared of, things that hold more weight than what Alex is ready for yet. He swallows around those things, makes them clunk and clatter around each other in his mouth. They roll around for a bit until they settle at the back of his mouth. For safekeeping, Alex thinks. He’s keeping them safe. He wants to say them, eventually. He just doesn’t know when. Not yet.

“I’ll be here,” Alex promises, voice soft, “I’ll always be here. For as long as you’ll have me.”

**iv.** _It’s not your fault._  
Alex drops a glass.

While he’s cursing and grumbling at himself, attacking the pool of juice on the floor with paper towels with as much aggression as he can to prevent it from ruining the floors, he hears the bedroom door slam. 

He pauses.

“John?” he calls out. “You okay?”

John doesn’t answer. Alex’s heart climbs up the knobs of his spine all the way to the base of his skull and settles there. His feet start moving and then suddenly he realizes he’s in front of their bedroom door and knocking. 

“Can I come in?” he asks. 

There’s a sound of muffled sobbing. It’s not really crying - that’s not the sound John makes when he’s sad. It’s a frightened sound. It’s a hiccup. It’s a strung-out sound with no release. An interrupted, frantic sound that scares Alex and breaks his heart at the same time. No - crushes his heart. Presses a weight over it. Suffocating. 

“Stay there,” says John. “I’m scared I’ll do something I don’t want to do.”

He means he’s scared he’ll attack Alex. He’s scared he’ll forget. That’s never happened so far, has never even came close, he’s always recognized Alex when he was like this and he’s never attacked him. There was one time when he’d woken up in the middle of the night to Alex coming to bed and woken up, he’d gotten up from the bed and backed himself into a corner, just stared at Alex with a wary expression until he’d said “hey, it’s just me, baby, it’s me,” backed off. He hadn’t remembered it in the morning, but Alex keeps thinking about it, about the frightened look in his eyes and his shaking limbs. He’d looked like he’d been scared he’d _kill_ him. 

But there has never been a time when John seemed like he could have attacked Alex, or anyone else for that matter. He’d been more violent, more impulsive in college, before he enlisted, even, he’d picked fights and came home with his teeth bloody and face bruised. Afterwards, he’s been quieter. Not as angry. More wary. A little on edge, easily agitated, but mostly he’s taken that out on himself, or suppressed it. It reminds Alex of himself at sixteen. It reminds Alex of himself now. They’re both coping. They’re both trying.

But then again, John knows himself better than Alex knows him even if sometimes that’s hard for Alex to understand. The distinction between their souls is sometimes something that slips Alex’s mind. Sometimes he thinks they’re the same person. They’re not. That’s the problem. They’re not.

“Alexander,” John says from the bedroom. Alex has a feeling he probably has his hand pressed into the wood of the door. He thinks he’s probably shaking. “I love you.”

Alex shudders. “I love you too,” he says. Swallows. “So much.”

**v.** _I love you._  
Curled around Alex their bed John breathes soft puffs of air into the back of his neck and twitches in his sleep. 

They keep missing each other. Lately they’re both busy - Alex with his work, John with being busy. Alex isn’t sure what he does to keep himself busy and sometimes he’s a little scared to ask. It keeps him busy. It keeps him occupied. It keeps him relatively happy. Alex is willing to take that. 

But now - 

Alex is home early. It’s eleven. He’s in bed. John was asleep already when he came in, and when he put himself into their bed John crawled over, curled himself around Alex’s body. It made Alex’s heart warm, oddly enough. _He_ makes Alex warm, continuously. Consistently.

“Hm,” John hums. He stirs, and then his eyelashes flutter and he’s blinking himself awake. “Hey.”

Alex smiles at him over his shoulder. He thinks, _fuck it_ , and rolls over onto his other side so he can face John. “Hey.” 

“It’s late,” John says. It’s not phrased as a question but Alex thinks it might still be one. 

“Yeah,” he says. He smiles again. “You should go back to sleep.”

John smiles, too, then. “Yeah.” He closes his eyes and puts his head on Alex’s shoulder, gentle, a little cautious. Alex stretches his arm out, rests his palm over John’s spine. John makes a purring noise. 

Alex closes his eyes. He thinks about John’s bones under his hands. He thinks about his eyes. He thinks _I love you_. And he sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> i have all my limbs. if i have said or done anything Bad please let me know. i purposefully did not focus on johns lack of an arm here bc like...i dont want to turn smth im not very familiar w into a sob story. anyways.
> 
> disclaimer for johns mental stuff: i am projecting. 
> 
> find me on tumblr @laflams and on twitter @jchnlavrens


End file.
